War Machine is now available.

The War Machine is a model by Epic Games, which I found in PSK format in one of their skeletal animation tutorials. I'd guess it's from Playstation 2 UT. It uses the Male Soldier skin layout, and suitably robotic Male Soldier skins work on it with minimal conversion.

I've imported it into UT and converted War Machine (the robot Male Soldier skin in normal UT), Overkill (an Epic Games skin by Shane Caudle) and 9 community-created skins (some of them tweaked slightly) to go with it. (Big thanks to X1, Havoc, Kingspyder, _unDuLe_, Kingscurvy, Krow, Kasarul and Mirage for permission to use their work.)

Skins for this model don't have to be Male Soldier conversions - there can be original, purpose-built War Machine skins too, so get painting!

Needless to say, this model uses Advanced Model Support, so if you can use Unrealscript, you can enhance your (original or converted) skins with various bits of code (want to use team colours on the arms or face? You can - some of my conversions already have these!) Full skinning notes and source code are available, so you can see how it's done.

Get the full details here: AMS Models [Edit, December 2002: all models merged into one page].

I've also fixed a couple of issues in the Advanced Models SDK and rewritten some of my UT Mods FAQ.

Uploaded a huge wad of changed files which look nicer, have a more logical structure and completely break lots of links. The majority of pages on this site are now accessible by a path ending in /, which means they'll still work without breaking any more links if I switch between HTML/SSI/CGI/whatever.

The site is now generated by version 3x10^-6 of Pseudosite, which is a complete re-implementation in nearly pure Perl (I use XML::Parser, which uses the Expat library, but the rest's Perl). Basically, I decided XSLT was just too slow and kludgy for the sort of stuff I was doing. I will release Pseudosite as open source Real Soon Now (er... that'll be sometime next spring then?) as soon as it's reasonably stable.

There's new content too (wow!) although most visitors probably won't look at it. Ever wondered why multiples of 9 have digits that add up to 9? You can find that, and a discussion of 37-fingered aliens (well, sort of) in the maths stuff section.

Advanced Model Support for Unreal Tournament, version 110, is out now. Fileplanet, NGI and Evihcra already have copies; more mirrors will be added when I can get them. If you run a public file archive, please mirror the file and tell me where you've put it so I can add it to the download list.

Here's the info which will appear on news sites eventually:

Advanced Model Support version 110 is out now.

This version fixes some minor problems with v102, and is likely to be the last version ever, since I'm now at university. (As a result, anyone e-mailing me for help might get sent the address of a FAQ if they're really lucky, but is more likely to just not get a reply...)

AMS is an unofficial patch for Unreal Tournament. Models designed for it will only work if you have it installed - this is probably enough to make you want the download, since AMS models so far include cool stuff like Greg "Slyrr" Fisk's Gollum, Mark "K'Rakarth" Laiman's Wraithguard II and Chris Glenn's Space Marine 40K v2.

If you're a UT modeller and don't speak fluent UnrealScript, you should try using it, because it's designed to be easier and more flexible than TournamentMale, SkeletalPlayer etc. If you are a UScript guru, you should still try it, because you can do miscellaneous cool stuff with AMS models if you know how. The SDK is available from my site, Paradox Productions.

I have semi-released Advanced Model Support for Unreal Tournament, version 110. It will be posted on Polycount soon (I'm not hosting the download because AMS 102 comprehensively ate my bandwidth quota).

The SDK is now available to download from this site - this is only for model makers and programmers.

This site will probably not be updated for a while.

My old web host has complained about my bandwidth usage (AMS was too popular), so I've moved to Joshua Internet, a host offering more features (yay!) and more generous bandwidth quotas (yay!), but costing twice as much. Oh well, such is life. At least I'm immune to Code Red now (my old host ran IIS 5 on Win2K, Joshua Internet run Apache on Linux 2.2).

I've taken the opportunity to add SSI, rebuild my logo, and do all sorts of internal hacking to make updates/automation easier. My site building tool, pseudosite (pseudorandom's Sub-optimal Inefficient Transformation Environment), is slowly approaching pre-alpha quality :-)

(18 September) Well, the DNS seems to have propagated, and I've fixed a few bugs in pseudosite which caused broken links in the new site. Please note that the switch to SHTML makes most links break anyway, as I've gone from .htm to .shtml files - some pages have redirectors from the old names to the new ones, using either meta tags, Javascript or a simple hyperlink (whichever your browser supports).

Oops... it appears the INT file included in the Advanced Model Support UMOD is an older version than I'd intended. To get the extra key bindings mentioned in the changes list, download this replacement INT file [link removed: get AMS v110 instead] and put it in your Unreal Tournament System folder, overwriting the old one.

This will only work with Advanced Model Support 1.02, not with 1.01. Package versions are not affected so you will be able to join multiplayer games without problems. Sorry for any inconvenience.

No updates for a while, but even so, I've been busy. In Real Life, I've finished A-Level and STEP exams, then been on holiday in north Wales for a week (for those of you who follow British news: no, I wasn't struck by lightning or drowned by a flood).

Now I'm back, I have stacks of news:

• Unreal Tournament: Advanced Model Support 1.02 is out. The SDK isn't quite finished (see below), but the version for ordinary mortals :-) is ready.

  Here's what it offers, if you haven't heard of it:

  • Easy scripting for almost any model - just subclass generic scripts and fill in the blanks
  • Support for powerful scripted skins - giving skinners with Unrealscript experience the power to customize model settings and enable/disable team skins for their skin only
  • The UT Playstation 2 male animations - AMS models are no longer dependent on Bonus Pack 4, unlike earlier skeletally-animated models
  • The first and probably only public release of the UT Playstation 2 female animations
  • Partial fixes for a couple of UT skeletal bugs nobody had noticed :-)

  And here's what's new:

  • Scripted skins get the chance to clean up after themselves, which should have happened in 1.01 but didn't thanks to a couple of missing lines of code (thanks to UsAaR33 for pointing that out).
  • AMS now has a mod menu item with which you can set the behaviour of Player Setup or go to the AMS web page.
  • AMS now alters Space Marine 40K, if you're using it, to fix a minor typo in the sound effects. One of the pain sounds was spelt wrong and didn't play. It does now.
  • You get some extra key bindings in the Preferences screen. These are mostly basic UT features which Epic didn't include an automatic key binding for.
  • Certain models have a new taunt called Challenge. This is not available on the Voice menu, only by binding a key to it. This only works for some models (models which use the built-in AMS Male animation set, such as Space Marine v2.01, Wraithguard II, and hopefully future models). This is an Epic feature, not an AMS one - I just made it more accessible.

  Versions 1.01 and 1.02 are compatible, so don't worry about network compatibility. I've tried 1.01 client/1.02 server and vice versa.

• pseudorandom.co.uk generally: Outside AMS, you may have noticed some structural changes to the site which I implemented between exams and never got round to uploading. I've also marked out-of-date Paradox Productions content so you can tell it's been archived.
• Old games: Finally, for X-Wing Alliance fans (any of you still alive?) I've uploaded my old X-Wing Alliance mods, with updated readme files (no new content, just my new web and e-mail addresses).

I've also been typing away on my old Psion 3c and almost finished a rewrite of the Advanced Model Support SDK. Actually, I'll probably call it the Advanced Models SDK now, since some of it is relevant to any skeletal model maker. While I remember, thanks to Laura Smith for contributing 3D Studio Max info and Burnt Kona for lending me his status doll tutorial.

Unlike the AMS 1.01 SDK, this one will be available to browse online (everything except the sample models will be accessible directly from this site), although I'll also make a downloadable zip file available for offline reference (this will have the demo models and printer-friendly HTML). I might be able to get the online-reading version hosted on Epicknights too, although I can't guarantee anything.

An unfinished version of the AMSDK is available right now.

Advanced Model Support version 1.01 is now available. Get it now!

A couple of long-awaited models are also available from this site - Wraithguard II by Mark Laiman, and Space Marine 40K version 2 by Chris Glenn. Both are (coincidentally) from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and both are upgrades by me, with permission from the respective authors, to previous models that had bugs. They require Advanced Model Support. The whole package (3 zipfiles including AMS) is 3 MB, so get downloading!

Important: if you downloaded AMS version 100, which was only available for a few hours, you must replace it with version 101. The two are not compatible. Please re-download the two models as well if you are in this situation (version 200 of either model needs replacing, version 201 is current).

Hmm, not much news for a while. I've been working on a UT mod called Advanced Model Support, which is almost ready for release (info is on the message board at EpicKnights for now), as well as cooperating with UsAaR33 on the next version of Oldskool (actually, it's 3 separate mods now - Enhanced UT for menu enhancements, Oldskool for Unreal I gameplay, and Oldskool Models for the U1 player meshes, now with extra team skins by me).

Thanks to a new 40GB IBM hard disk, I've been reinstalling Windows and installing Debian GNU/Linux. Both OSs seem to work now (/me crosses fingers).

My contact details have changed a bit - see contact page for details.

Finally, I have A-Level exams starting next Tuesday. Wish me luck!

Added an open-source section containing my Computing coursework, Photo Indexer. The coursework has been handed in but I'll continue to develop the application if I have time.

Rebuilt various bits of the site to take more advantage of XSLT. The most visible change is probably that many links now have tooltips using the title attribute (wave the cursor over them to see where they go).

Added UT Mods FAQ. This is very much a work in progress.

Added my modified version of Gaia to the Web mastery section. Also disabled CSS on this site for semi-compatible browsers (Netscape Navigator 4.x), because I was sick of it never working quite the way it should :-(

If you use Netscape 4, please upgrade to Netscape 6 or Mozilla, or switch to Internet Explorer or Opera.

[Link-rot removal update, late 2002: Web section no longer exists]

Added the incomplete Web mastery section, which includes information about XHTML.

[Link-rot removal update, late 2002: Web section no longer exists]

Added a fix for the UT Bonus Pack 4 allowing Unreal Tournament players to produce and use custom skins for the WarBoss and Xan Mk.2.